I just don't get all the pro-HTML5 hype. HTML5 is going to be no different than any previous version of HTML... eventually bastardized by each browser vendor in the name of "innovation".
Flash is successful today because of it's proprietary nature. Every browser renders Flash using a single vendor's engine (FOSS alternatives execpted, they're certainly an edge case). I realize that proprietary software is a practical or philosophical problem for some folks, but the reality of the matter is that it's a necessity for consistent content rendering.
Flash isn't present on the iPhone because you wouldn't need the App Store to deliver half the janky 99-cent games that people are buying (and sending 29 cents per to Apple). Apple won't ever allow Flash (or Silverlight or proper HTML5) on these devices unless customers just don't buy them otherwise.
There are so many other cheaper vehicles, that get better gas mileage (and therefore contribute less to environmental destruction via oil exploration and refining) and that don't have huge, toxic battery packs that will be environmentally destructive in the event of a crash or when the car is scrapped (or merely the batteries require replacement). Honda and Toyota both offer several conventionally powered PZEV vehicles (the same standard to which the Prius conforms).
I think then that you have pointed out the real flaw: insufficient marketing.
Although your argument about DSL requiring a phone line is valid, most broadband users in America use cable modems. Even so you might find that a basic phone circuit + VoIP price is less than you currently pay for your unlimited POTS price.
I have VoIP phone service from Vonage. I have an ordinary 212 phone number, use my ordinary cordless phone to call any other phone number in the world in the usual way. the only difference is that instead of hooking up to the local telco's box, my phone hooks into a piece of Cisco hardware (free from Vonage) which connects in turn to my router and broadband circuit. For $27/mo I get unlimited local calling, 500 minutes US/Canada long distance (3.9c/min after that) and all manner of features (voicemail, caller id, call waiting, forwarding, blah blah blah). Combine that with the $30 I pay for cable modem service, and for $57 I have broadband + telephone.
Ah, but you have a contradiction there. The reason we pay to receive calls on mobile phones is that we don't pay for local calls. There really isn't a practical way for an end user to distinguish between the number for a landline phone and the number for a mobile phone here in the US. In fact, starting next Monday, you'll be able to port landline numbers to mobile phones (which I plan to do immediately). If I remember right, in Europe, mobile numbers all have certain prefixes, so that when you call someone, you know you will be charged extra because it's a mobile number. Here in the US, we have never really had that (some cell providers were known to use specific number blocks, like Sprint PCS and 99x numbers), and with the newest rules on porting your number, there will be absolutely no difference - what was a landline number this week could be a cell number next week.
You're working from the same foolish premise most Linux advocates do: that the desktop is relevant. Who gives a shit about windowing apps? What I really need is a Mono runtime that can run my ASP.NET/ADO.NET applications, and that's (relatively) easy to deliver, and to an extent, is already being delivered.
I agree with your comments about unchecked buffer overruns, but my point is that without physical access to the ATM internals, the possibility for input is limited to the 20 or so keys on the outside of the ATM. Could you exploit a buffer overrun on a PC with no acess to I/O hardware other than a keyboard that didn't have a Control or Alt key?
* The bank connection includes federally mandated encryption. The FFIEC (Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council) specifies the exact standard of encryption used. by the way, have you notice that there are no "Windows standard" encryption schemes anyway? They are all industry standards.
* Buffer overrun exploits also rely on unchecked input - if input is screened to a limited variety of characters few if any buffer overrun exploits would be possible.
* Finally, the maintenance staff has *gasp* physical access to the cartridges of cash loaded into the machine. Why the hell would they bother with a virus when they can just take the money and wander off? The basic premise of any bank is that you can trust the employees not to take the money. As someone who has worked for financial institutions for most of his career, I can tell you without a doubt that anyone who violates this trust is detected and dealt with in a quick and harsh fashion.
You are incorrect. Senders of the letters must certify under penalty of perjury that the person submitting the notice has authority to assert claims on behalf of the copyright owner. They must only have a "good faith belief" that the recipient is infringing.
Check out this article from a promient IP attorney for further info.
Hey, massive corporate body or not, it's still illegal. When you go to Best Buy and shoplift CD's, they're not like, "oh well, you're a high school kid, college student, or lone shoplifter, guess we'll have to let you go...".
That's not entirely true. I have a Dell Ultrasharp 1800FP at home and in the office. They are manufactured by LG... In fact it pisses me off I didn't buy the LG model because they built in a USB hub:)
You don't hate XBox - you have penis envy toward Microsoft. Deep in your mind, just like any good socialist, you are jealous of wealthy people and that fuels your ideology. The very fact that you plan to buy an XBox because it has a game that you want means that you like it in the only that really matters: with your wallet.
This is classic wrongheaded thinking. Who cares about consumers?
Where are most computers deployed? Businesses.
I can tell you that my 2.8ghz desktop is barely adequate for my development work - and that's just software development! I can only imagine doing video or scientific work. The desktop market just doesn't drive performance; the server and workstation markets are the real force there.
It's simple. The law did not require it, so companies did not provide it... why would you eliminate a valuable customer lock-in feature?
For the same reason, I can't use my Sprint CDMA phone with other CDMA providers - Sprint and other CDMA providers collaborate to make that impossible, so they can all retain their customers.
After all, if I have to pay $200+ for a new phone and get a new number, there's going to have to be an amazingly good reason for me to switch.
>You can expect them to write perfectly good
>business applications from within an integrated
>environment.
Actually, you can't.
As an architect/project lead, I find that no greater than 50% of developers can actually be expected to write a business application of acceptable quality without intense supervision.
I do share your assessment about J2EE tools, though. As a.NET developer as well as J2EE, even the best tools are marginal, and I find Eclipse et al to be primitive at best.
I'm sure someone may have already mentioned this - but almost any manufacturer of servers (dell, hpq) sells a 1U pull-out drawer type unit with a flip-up LCD panel and keyboard...
You have 16 hours a day that you can devote to going back and making the code "good" under the same revenue model that OSS is produced - none at all!
As a programmer who receives or doesn't receive a very large bonus relative to the profit margin of my company, I have NO interest in "good" code - my interest is in the code which intersects minimum cost with maximum salability. This doesn't mean it's not important to code the Right Way, because bad coding often increases costs down the line, but often, it just doesn't matter.
Well, god and FedEx willing, that PC is about to be relegated to being a Linux test server tonight, so it's not a big issue. I am still fairly convinced that it is the driver, however, because the problem only cropped up after I installed the newest drivers.
I don't find that ATI's drivers are that great. I have a low end Radeon card, and after installing ATI's newest drivers, I have encountered three STOP errors in as many weeks.
I can't believe that if you can get DirecTV you can't get another provider... since their lines are probably carried by Covad or Worldcom. I have a Worldcom line from Speakeasy, which I can't say enough good things about. It's pricy, but I got free Xbox (or PS2)for signing up, free setup after rebate, 2 static IP's, and a host of other features. Good luck!
Get with it - VB is dead.
Microsoft included VB with the.NET tools only because they wouldn't be salable to many people without it. Their focus is clearly on C#, which, for all intents and purposes is a carbon copy of Java (perhaps without the unbelievably shitty GUI toolkits (think Oracle installer)). Hopefully (however unlikely), they will use Borland's cross-platform experience.
As a devout Microsoft developer, I love VS.NET... but I'm not such a bigot that I don't see the value of deploying my.NET apps on other platforms - Linux, Sun, BSD. I follow the Mono project with a lot of enthusiasm, and I'm enthused to see a potential for Microsoft to expand in that direction too, and I think they're beginning to see that the writing is on the wall: Linux and other OSes are here to stay, they form an important part of one's arsenal when deploying an application, and for Microsoft to expand their market share, they're going to need to get on cross-platform deployment capability.
While, as a software engineer, I try within reason to make optimized code, it's usually just not financially reasonable. The few thousand dollars it costs to put top-of-the-line processors in a web server is a drop in the bucket compared to how much it costs to pay a team of developers for a week.
I'm well aware of the fact that Vz owns my local CO. However, the previous comment is referring to the ISP / DSL provider vs. VerizonOnline.
Furthermore, your statement is also fundamentally false. In our area you can get telephone service from RCN, which is provided over their own fiber network, independent of the local Vz CO.
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I just don't get all the pro-HTML5 hype. HTML5 is going to be no different than any previous version of HTML... eventually bastardized by each browser vendor in the name of "innovation". Flash is successful today because of it's proprietary nature. Every browser renders Flash using a single vendor's engine (FOSS alternatives execpted, they're certainly an edge case). I realize that proprietary software is a practical or philosophical problem for some folks, but the reality of the matter is that it's a necessity for consistent content rendering. Flash isn't present on the iPhone because you wouldn't need the App Store to deliver half the janky 99-cent games that people are buying (and sending 29 cents per to Apple). Apple won't ever allow Flash (or Silverlight or proper HTML5) on these devices unless customers just don't buy them otherwise.
There are so many other cheaper vehicles, that get better gas mileage (and therefore contribute less to environmental destruction via oil exploration and refining) and that don't have huge, toxic battery packs that will be environmentally destructive in the event of a crash or when the car is scrapped (or merely the batteries require replacement). Honda and Toyota both offer several conventionally powered PZEV vehicles (the same standard to which the Prius conforms).
I think then that you have pointed out the real flaw: insufficient marketing. Although your argument about DSL requiring a phone line is valid, most broadband users in America use cable modems. Even so you might find that a basic phone circuit + VoIP price is less than you currently pay for your unlimited POTS price. I have VoIP phone service from Vonage. I have an ordinary 212 phone number, use my ordinary cordless phone to call any other phone number in the world in the usual way. the only difference is that instead of hooking up to the local telco's box, my phone hooks into a piece of Cisco hardware (free from Vonage) which connects in turn to my router and broadband circuit. For $27/mo I get unlimited local calling, 500 minutes US/Canada long distance (3.9c/min after that) and all manner of features (voicemail, caller id, call waiting, forwarding, blah blah blah). Combine that with the $30 I pay for cable modem service, and for $57 I have broadband + telephone.
Ah, but you have a contradiction there. The reason we pay to receive calls on mobile phones is that we don't pay for local calls. There really isn't a practical way for an end user to distinguish between the number for a landline phone and the number for a mobile phone here in the US. In fact, starting next Monday, you'll be able to port landline numbers to mobile phones (which I plan to do immediately). If I remember right, in Europe, mobile numbers all have certain prefixes, so that when you call someone, you know you will be charged extra because it's a mobile number. Here in the US, we have never really had that (some cell providers were known to use specific number blocks, like Sprint PCS and 99x numbers), and with the newest rules on porting your number, there will be absolutely no difference - what was a landline number this week could be a cell number next week.
That's just patently false. Your satisfaction, maybe, he doesn't worry about, but then, when did you ever spend money on a Microsoft product?
Microsoft (like any well-run business) worries about customer satisfaction. You mistake that for user satisfaction. These are not the same.
You're working from the same foolish premise most Linux advocates do: that the desktop is relevant. Who gives a shit about windowing apps? What I really need is a Mono runtime that can run my ASP.NET/ADO.NET applications, and that's (relatively) easy to deliver, and to an extent, is already being delivered.
I agree with your comments about unchecked buffer overruns, but my point is that without physical access to the ATM internals, the possibility for input is limited to the 20 or so keys on the outside of the ATM. Could you exploit a buffer overrun on a PC with no acess to I/O hardware other than a keyboard that didn't have a Control or Alt key?
Your arguments are foolish on the face.
* The bank connection includes federally mandated encryption. The FFIEC (Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council) specifies the exact standard of encryption used. by the way, have you notice that there are no "Windows standard" encryption schemes anyway? They are all industry standards.
* Buffer overrun exploits also rely on unchecked input - if input is screened to a limited variety of characters few if any buffer overrun exploits would be possible.
* Finally, the maintenance staff has *gasp* physical access to the cartridges of cash loaded into the machine. Why the hell would they bother with a virus when they can just take the money and wander off? The basic premise of any bank is that you can trust the employees not to take the money. As someone who has worked for financial institutions for most of his career, I can tell you without a doubt that anyone who violates this trust is detected and dealt with in a quick and harsh fashion.
You are incorrect. Senders of the letters must certify under penalty of perjury that the person submitting the notice has authority to assert claims on behalf of the copyright owner. They must only have a "good faith belief" that the recipient is infringing. Check out this article from a promient IP attorney for further info.
Hey, massive corporate body or not, it's still illegal. When you go to Best Buy and shoplift CD's, they're not like, "oh well, you're a high school kid, college student, or lone shoplifter, guess we'll have to let you go...".
That's not entirely true. I have a Dell Ultrasharp 1800FP at home and in the office. They are manufactured by LG... In fact it pisses me off I didn't buy the LG model because they built in a USB hub :)
"I hate x-box"
This is a ridiculous statement.
You don't hate XBox - you have penis envy toward Microsoft. Deep in your mind, just like any good socialist, you are jealous of wealthy people and that fuels your ideology. The very fact that you plan to buy an XBox because it has a game that you want means that you like it in the only that really matters: with your wallet.
This is classic wrongheaded thinking. Who cares about consumers?
Where are most computers deployed? Businesses.
I can tell you that my 2.8ghz desktop is barely adequate for my development work - and that's just software development! I can only imagine doing video or scientific work. The desktop market just doesn't drive performance; the server and workstation markets are the real force there.
It's simple. The law did not require it, so companies did not provide it... why would you eliminate a valuable customer lock-in feature? For the same reason, I can't use my Sprint CDMA phone with other CDMA providers - Sprint and other CDMA providers collaborate to make that impossible, so they can all retain their customers. After all, if I have to pay $200+ for a new phone and get a new number, there's going to have to be an amazingly good reason for me to switch.
>You can expect them to write perfectly good
.NET developer as well as J2EE, even the best tools are marginal, and I find Eclipse et al to be primitive at best.
>business applications from within an integrated
>environment.
Actually, you can't. As an architect/project lead, I find that no greater than 50% of developers can actually be expected to write a business application of acceptable quality without intense supervision. I do share your assessment about J2EE tools, though. As a
I'm sure someone may have already mentioned this - but almost any manufacturer of servers (dell, hpq) sells a 1U pull-out drawer type unit with a flip-up LCD panel and keyboard...
You have 16 hours a day that you can devote to going back and making the code "good" under the same revenue model that OSS is produced - none at all! As a programmer who receives or doesn't receive a very large bonus relative to the profit margin of my company, I have NO interest in "good" code - my interest is in the code which intersects minimum cost with maximum salability. This doesn't mean it's not important to code the Right Way, because bad coding often increases costs down the line, but often, it just doesn't matter.
Well, god and FedEx willing, that PC is about to be relegated to being a Linux test server tonight, so it's not a big issue. I am still fairly convinced that it is the driver, however, because the problem only cropped up after I installed the newest drivers.
Actually, no. I am not overclocking, and the STOP error was specifically "Thread stuck in device driver." - the ATI driver, specifically.
I don't find that ATI's drivers are that great. I have a low end Radeon card, and after installing ATI's newest drivers, I have encountered three STOP errors in as many weeks.
If you can't fix my $100 sink without a license, why should you be able to fix my $3000 computer?
I can't believe that if you can get DirecTV you can't get another provider... since their lines are probably carried by Covad or Worldcom. I have a Worldcom line from Speakeasy, which I can't say enough good things about. It's pricy, but I got free Xbox (or PS2)for signing up, free setup after rebate, 2 static IP's, and a host of other features. Good luck!
Get with it - VB is dead. Microsoft included VB with the .NET tools only because they wouldn't be salable to many people without it. Their focus is clearly on C#, which, for all intents and purposes is a carbon copy of Java (perhaps without the unbelievably shitty GUI toolkits (think Oracle installer)). Hopefully (however unlikely), they will use Borland's cross-platform experience.
As a devout Microsoft developer, I love VS.NET... but I'm not such a bigot that I don't see the value of deploying my .NET apps on other platforms - Linux, Sun, BSD. I follow the Mono project with a lot of enthusiasm, and I'm enthused to see a potential for Microsoft to expand in that direction too, and I think they're beginning to see that the writing is on the wall: Linux and other OSes are here to stay, they form an important part of one's arsenal when deploying an application, and for Microsoft to expand their market share, they're going to need to get on cross-platform deployment capability.
While, as a software engineer, I try within reason to make optimized code, it's usually just not financially reasonable. The few thousand dollars it costs to put top-of-the-line processors in a web server is a drop in the bucket compared to how much it costs to pay a team of developers for a week.
I'm well aware of the fact that Vz owns my local CO. However, the previous comment is referring to the ISP / DSL provider vs. VerizonOnline. Furthermore, your statement is also fundamentally false. In our area you can get telephone service from RCN, which is provided over their own fiber network, independent of the local Vz CO.